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Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

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Re: Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

#11

Post by SimonPStevens »

johannesrexx wrote: post #10

Details please. Does the printer refuse to print, or does the operating system printing subsystem refuse to print? What is your operating system? Have you given Brother support an opportunity to respond?

Printer refuses to print. "Replace toner" message. Operating system does appear to submit to print queue. (Windows 10)

Printer toner indicator says Black is almost full (recently changed as I print mainly b/w), Cyan & Magenta are low, Yellow is empty and the one it complains about when trying to print.

I've continued messing with it for the last hour and even putting the printer into "black and white" mode, and changing the printer options in the OS to "Mono" it still refuses to print. Brothers own help page says it works [0], but I've followed these and it still doesn't print.

I've tried resetting the printer, updating the firmware and drivers, rebooting both printer and computer.

https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/52457/s...

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

#12

Post by SimonPStevens »

57FkMytWjyFu wrote: post #9

Doesn't make it any less frustrating, at least Brother could say something in the manual, but this may be the proximate cause. https://www.howtogeek.com/how-your-printer-leaves-invisible-...

Yeah, I suspected this could be related. Additionally frustrating as I'd honestly not a massive fan of printer dot codes either.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

#14

Post by rawgabbit »

57FkMytWjyFu wrote: post #9

Doesn't make it any less frustrating, at least Brother could say something in the manual, but this may be the proximate cause. https://www.howtogeek.com/how-your-printer-leaves-invisible-...

Wow. I had no idea these yellow printing codes were required by the Secret Service.

I also have a color Brother printer. I switched the cartridge to monochrome years ago. Now I know whose to blame for using up all the yellow.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

#15

Post by [deleted] »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #11
johannesrexx wrote: post #10

Details please. Does the printer refuse to print, or does the operating system printing subsystem refuse to print? What is your operating system? Have you given Brother support an opportunity to respond?

Printer refuses to print. "Replace toner" message. Operating system does appear to submit to print queue. (Windows 10) Printer toner indicator says Black is almost full (recently changed as I print mainly b/w), Cyan & Magenta are low, Yellow is empty and the one it complains about when trying to print. I've continued messing with it for the last hour and even putting the printer into "black and white" mode, and chang…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

#16

Post by EvanAnderson »

57FkMytWjyFu wrote: post #9

Doesn't make it any less frustrating, at least Brother could say something in the manual, but this may be the proximate cause. https://www.howtogeek.com/how-your-printer-leaves-invisible-...

That's my suspicion, too, being that it's yellow that's empty.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers no longer consumer friendly

#17

Post by johannesrexx »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #11
johannesrexx wrote: post #10

Details please. Does the printer refuse to print, or does the operating system printing subsystem refuse to print? What is your operating system? Have you given Brother support an opportunity to respond?

Printer refuses to print. "Replace toner" message. Operating system does appear to submit to print queue. (Windows 10) Printer toner indicator says Black is almost full (recently changed as I print mainly b/w), Cyan & Magenta are low, Yellow is empty and the one it complains about when trying to print. I've continued messing with it for the last hour and even putting the printer into "black and white" mode, and chang…

The yellow toner is needed to print the yellow steganographic dot pattern containing the printer serial number. My guess is that for Brother to comply with its agreement with the US Secret Service, the printer has to have yellow toner to print anything at all.

Also the wording in the Brother tech support article you linked to tells us how to print *using* only black toner, it does not say that this works when the color cartridges are empty. Sneaky bastiches!

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